Date Collecting?

Does anyone collect dates regardless of the stamp. I was just going through some otherwise boring stamps and saw one with a nice postmark of my birthdate and it was 112 years old. So it made me think if anyone tries to collect any stamp that has their birthdate - or does anyone collect exact historical dates regardless of the stamp, e.g Titanic disaster, stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, etc.

Interesting idea. I'm looking forward to the replies.

KirkS

I am looking at collecting my "year of birth" as a side `collection

I'm collecting stamps worldwide issued on my birthday. The first stamps on that date was issued in 1847. In years where that day is on a weekend, as it was the case in 2005, there are no issues. The year with the greatest number of issues, i.e. 17, was 1998.

Klaus

That would make an interesting side collection, I'll start looking out for my birthdate on stamps now :)

A mate of mine would struggle..he was born on 29th Feb.

Struggle? Not really. I just checked (online catalogue, keyword search) and found 100 issues. I did not check the definitives, so there may be more. A nice little collection that would be.

Klaus

I think I see two different thoughts going on here - one is the "postmark" date of a stamp (usage date) and the other is "issue"date. I was speaking more to the former, but either is interesting.

I'm trying to build a calendar for the orange 2c 1st issue revenues- the inexpensive ones, R15c maybe is one of the Scott numbers. I thought that itd be easiest to read the dates on this issue. Not picky on the year, just trying to pick up as many of the days of the year as I can.

Also it makes if nice to be able to spend time at a dealers table at a show without having to spend a lot of cash. It's a nice little diversion from the expense of US classics, yet these stamps are classics.

And since I collect covers by month and year on the A25 3c 1861, I've found some good dates-- NY Day 1863, and my birthday 6-13. I bid on once and wish I would've bid more, a cover dated April 14, 1865, the day Lincoln was shot. I'd love to find that date again.

Great topic, btw-- Thanks, Ray

Great post ray.mac. Exactly what I was thinking - adds personal value to an otherwise low value stamp. Many of the older European stamps have very clear postmarks - maybe I will start looking up "this day in history" when I see a clean postmark!

Years ago I was given a box full of envelope cut squares with the postmarks fully visible. I went through a few envelopes of them and came up with month and day postmarks for 121 days so far. I have 3x the amount still to go through, so I probably can come up with a pretty complete "calendar" for months and days anyway based on this accumulation alone. It just goes to show how a rather "boring" collection can be made to be quite interesting.

wt1...I was thinking of doing that with Machins...one
for each day of the year. Very kindly...the British
have done a good job of putting circle cancels on the
stamps.

On another Stamp site, one of the members collected a cover with every date for the year 1962, the year he was born.

alanl said I was thinking of doing that with Machins...one
for each day of the year. Very kindly...the British
have done a good job of putting circle cancels on the
stamps.

On sorting thru a batch of Machins on paper I come across quite a few of these.

Day,month and year all on the stamp. I've been keeping them and occasionally get a good one like this... a leap year date.

Janet Klug did a nice article about this in Linn's awhile back.

http://www.linns.com/howto/refreshe...rcourse.aspx

As mentioned by Scotzm, a leap year date collection is yet another collecting discipline. Here's a leap year postmark I found quite by accident today -- it's 76 years old: